Virginia - Free Public Death Notices

By Claire Dowell


The Freedom of Information Act has mandated the government to let the public access their personal records. One of the states that have implemented such laws is Virginia. Virginia death records along other public documents can be accessed by the residents of the state.

The death of a loved one may be the last thing that we want to hear. This very emotional incident still has to be documented to be used in government transactions. The official document is given to the family members of the deceased in the form of a certificate. The relatives of the deceased individual may have difficulties when processing transactions such as insurance and dependent declaration without the sad document. Also, if the widowed spouse has plans to marry again, he/she would not be able to proceed with the marriage without the death certificate of the deceased spouse.

As the name implies, death certificate would contain information about the deceased. One would be able to find the cause of death as well as the date and place where the person died. Additional information includes the details of the interment services and the names of the immediate family of the deceased.

Registered deaths in Virginia since June 14, 1912 can be obtained. There are counties that have records since 186 such as Norfolk, Hampton, Newport News and Richmond. A processing fee of $12 is needed in order to process the request. Only the relatives of the deceased are allowed to request for the death records of the deceased. The request requires the information of the record that is being obtained the requesting individual is also needed in order to proceed with the search.

One can check the public library to know about the death of an individual. Going through the obituary section of the newspaper archives there can give you information however; this may take a while and can eat up time. Going to the office of the Vital Statistics in the state of Virginia is one way to get a certified copy of the document. The county clerk office can also help give out eh certified copies especially if the deceased died in that county. The document can be obtained after several days since it was requested at any of the mentioned office. The development of the Internet has greatly improved the retrieval time

Online retrieval of a death record in Virginia has made the whole process convenient and easy. There are a lot of websites that offers to obtain a copy of the death certificate of an individual. One can do a free death records search online but the results may not be as reliable as those coming from a pad search.




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